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THE TEACHER AND 
THE STATE 



_B 1741 

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Copy 1 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE GRADUATING CLASSES OF 

THE IOWA STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE 

JUNE 9TH, 1914 



BY 

THOMAS HUSTON MACBRIDE 

PRESIDENT OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA 



SUPPLEMENT TO BULLETIN VOLUME XV, NUMBER 1 
IOWA STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE 



By tjpaostejf 



V^ 



THE TEACHER AND THE STATE. 



All lacking in recognition indeed your speaker might well 
be esteemed, did he not hasten in his earliest sentence to 
express appreciation of his privilege in this fortunate hour. To 
appear thus before some hundreds of enthusiastic young people, 
all expectant of honor and congratulation, might well stir the 
sympathy of any who would essay, by uttered speech, to meet 
the thoughts of his fellow-men. There is really nowhere in the 
free life of this commonwealth anything finer than the scene 
before us this morning; whether we contemplate the beauty 
of the immediate spectacle, whether we estimate the signifi- 
cance of this ceremony, or whether, more keenly analytic, we 
go behind the present and see in all this the culmination of 
varied effort, of days and weeks of toil. 

This is the time for gratulation; weightier matters, I am 
advised, may now for this day, at least, be laid aside. Comenius 
and Pestalozzi, Herbart and Montessori, Hegel and Schleier- 
macher, and all the rest may be forgotten. To-day is to-day, 
and all its windows open to the future. Needless to say, that 
future, for this class of 1914, is very bright. This is Iowa; 
white clouds only sweep slowly through azure deeps, flowers 
deck all the landscapes, and the sunlight lies upon the rising 
harvests. And yet, were we called upon to give reasons for 
Buch optimism as at this moment here prevails, such confidence, 
Buch security of mind, we might find ourselves, as usual, em- 
barrassed for reply. We might begin to think again of 
examinations, happily now forever past ; and only at the last 
might we fall back upon the general buoyancy of youth and 
find there, perhaps, the most obvious reason why, for us to-day, 
the fields and skies are fair. 

This is Commencement. But in one sense it is different 
from the thousand similar events which everywhere for school 
and college divide with the roses the glory of this lovely month 
of June. In the college world, generally, men come up to 
claim diplomas, position among educated people ; here, not 
educated only are these young people, but educators ; informed 
indeed, but ready to share their knowledge instantly on 



demand; the day, the hour, the ceremony significant of much. 
Here is a double relation; past and future, to be sure, but 
unusual in that past and future are thus in singular fashion 
joined. Men and women who have enjoyed the hospitality of 
the commonwealth now go forth in peculiar sense, to serve it. 

Your speaker has no thought to be intrusive ; he is merely 
an onlooker in this fascinating scene. But, if you please, he 
may attempt to answer for you the significance of the day by 
discussing briefly this double relation of the teacher and the 
state, receiving and giving. 

Education is said to be a great, but very ordinary, means 
to a great, but entirely ordinary, end. It is all so ordinary 
that we forget sometimes the mystery that it holds. We are 
richer to-day ; but what is our added wealth ? We are happier ; 
wherein our blessedness acquired? We are quicker and 
smarter; of what kind is our accumulated wisdom? What 
have we gained ? What have we really received ? 

In the first place, none of us, I think, will look back over 
the years and attempt to find any complete answer to such 
questions in tasks actually or perfunctorily accomplished. 
There are always students who find satisfaction in the comple- 
tion from day to day of lessons formally assigned. I am not 
sure that they are wholly to blame. I am reminded that teach- 
ers themselves sometimes seem to do the same thing. For ad- 
mission to Harvard, for example, so many books, so many lines, 
so many problems are required. Lessons are assigned and les- 
sons heard, not to say recited. Small wonder if sometimes we 
estimate our finished work by such a scale ! It is like climbing 
stairs. We count the number of treads in our ascent, never 
heeding to what they lead, whether to new prospect or new 
vision, or to vision of any sort at all. 

Now, of course this kind of work is all very necessary. 
To reach a summit, stairs are exceedingly convenient things. 
But in any case, how soon the stairway may be forgotten; 
especially if we are to live upon the heights. No doubt all 
work attempted in a school like this, has for its object mastery, 
in so far, of the subjects we attempt. If we expect to teach, 
of course we are expected also to remember, at least, the 
principal facts and data of our subjects. We can never expect 
to enjoy our rightful influence in our work, or really to count 
for the most in this world, unless we are recognized as 
authority in something, somewhere. 



And yet, in all that we have done, we are, I hope, perfectly 
aware that our great gain is not in fact and datum, not in 
things that are recorded by any generous registrar, but in 
those things so hard to classify or name, recorded in some 
strange way in the book of experience, in the tapestry of each 
human life. You know by this time, I am sure, that it is not 
so much the subject, but the effect, that you have won. Latin, 
for instance, you have studied; but it is not in the amount of 
actual knowledge of great Caesar's speech that you rejoice 
to-day. Even now that hard-earned taste of ancient or medieval 
lore begins to die upon the palate, and promises soon to vanish 
quite, unless sedulously kept up, and to leave but a lingering 
reminiscence; and yet — suppose that by some finest intel- 
lectual telegraphy, we could stretch a viewless wire back across 
the centuries as we stretch threads of copper across the valleys. 
Take up the receiver and let the Roman speak; you could 
hardly understand him. At this end of the line his Latin 
sounds Italian, French, Spanish, Roumanian, even. Nothing in 
it but has changed "into something rich and strange ;" but you 
have added two thousand years to the compass of your life, and 
all the history of modern civilization lies between ; this you have 
gained! You may not understand Caesar, but you do under- 
stand the outcome of Caesar's life. 

German, too, you have attempted ; and the most philosophic 
tongue now spoken among men, has spread itself before you. 
You have caught some glimpses of it; but, perplexed by the 
genders, perhaps, of things inanimate, or overwhelmed by the 
genius that can keep in mind the unfinished first word of a 
sentence, going on, through phrase after phrase, only at length 
to find completion in some insignificant closing particle, and 
thus to attain in unbroken sphere a completely uttered thought, 
— overwhelmed by this, "'^ou have perhaps been content to 
carry hither only some lyric remnants, bits of haunting verse 
that immortalize Heine or Goethe ; although perhaps even here 
the author is for you merely an unburied shade. But if you 
have studied your German rightly, as no doubt you have, at 
the mere word the torches flare again against the night of the 
old Teutobergerwald ; the German knights ride along the Baltic 
sands ; castles rise and are mirrored in the green waters of the 
sunny Rhine ; the Hohenzollerns march to empire, as Frederick 
Second breaks the power of foolish France, gives Canada to 



English speech, and makes possible this Commencement at 
Cedar Falls ! That is what you have found in German ! 

Mathematics, physics have had their turn; and at this 
moment, most of your acquisitions lie in the fourth dimension 
of space. Pedagogy and even psychology — boldest attempt 
to plat easy avenues to the conquest of man's soul — even these 
no longer stand out with that sharpness which their uttered 
principles did once suggest. Both perception and apperception 
have become, possibly, earception, if not (i'^ception; and yet — 
you know how to teach. Why? Because you have seen experi- 
enced, gifted teachers teach; and, more, you are confident, not 
of psychology, but of yourself; and success comes with the 
dawning of the day. You have studied natural science. Was 
it botany, geology, zoology? You may not now recall; but as 
you look out of the window this morning the world looks 
different indeed; trees and herbs are marshalled in a procession 
that extends into the past so far, that only some concept of 
life's beginning can ever again satisfy your dreaming vision. 
You have added to your own life the millions of years that lie 
behind us. 

In fact, all along the lines of studied effort, if you are 
really normal students, I believe you are ready to admit that, 
while you have been studying all these things, you have not 
been limited by what you saw or heard, but your minds have 
far outrun the printed page, the speaker's tone, the measured 
hour or day or year, and you are away to claim an empire all 
your own, whose boundaries are the fields of time! 

I am sure I shall not be here misunderstood. From what 
I have said, you realize that I am not belittling the idea or value 
of exact information. I beg you to consider that, as I said at 
the beginning, real efficiency anywhere is conditioned upon 
accuracy and breadth of knowledge. I am referring merely 
to the ordinary experience of the ordinary student leaving an 
ordinary college, or even a teachers college. All exercises are 
but means. The value of the real outcome must be found in 
something else than mere numbered page, or treasured fact, 
however precious in itself. Only in yourself is the reward of 
a scholar's labor, only in experience shall such expenditure as 
his be justified. 

You are not linguists, but you know what language-study 
means, how and why it is pursued. You are not mathe- 
maticians, but you appreciate the efforts of those who are. 



You are not men and women of letters, but you know in what 
direction lie the flowery fields of literature, even if as yet you 
own not one ! Dr. McCosh, president of Princeton College, 
once when an old man read in chapel that famous thirteenth 
chapter of first Corinthians, which contains the phrase, "For 
we know in part" — . He stopped and turned upon his audience 
that scholarly face, lit up with a wonderful light and crowned 
with the crown of age; "For we know in part," he said. "But 
we hno'wl" Now you have it! All these days, these years, 
we have been learning, and now at last we find as a result that 
we know, indeed; but — we know in part only. But the eyes 
of our understandings have been opened; whereas we were 
blind, now we see, we know ! We have been learning ; yea, 
verily: we have been learning to know! 

But this matter of receptive education goes farther still, 
means more than anything I have so far suggested or described. 
Permit me to illustrate once more : 

"As You Like It" is your favorite play, the sweetest, 
purest, most delightful piece of human fancy ever written. 
Touchstone, as you remember, is a clown, but wise and witty; 
only by profession, a fool. The shepherd is talking with 
Touchstone : 

"How like you this shepherd's life, Master 
Touchstone?" 

' ' In respect it is solitary ... in the fields, 
it pleaseth me well. . . . Hast thou any phil- 
osophy in thee. Shepherd?" 

Then the shepherd goes on : 

"No more but that I know the more one 
sickens, the worse at ease he is; that the property 
of rain is to wet, and fire to burn; that good pas- 
ture makes fat sheep, and that a great cause of 
the night is lack of the sun." 

Now this is the outcome of the shepherd's experience; 

this is his attitude of mind, his philosophy. Professor James 

says, a man's philosophy is the most interesting thing about 

him. And here the shepherd, as each of us, has his philosophy, 

his sense of the world, his estimate of realities, of values; he 

has his way of looking at things; he is an optimist, a 

pessimist, or what not; he is discouraged or hopeful; and 

this is what we get from our contact with the things 

about us, with books, and teachers, and classes. From the 

atmosphere of this fine-builded hilltop on the prairie, from 

all our study, this alone we gain, this that abides. You came 

here to learn to be teachers, builders for the state, not to study 



arithmetic; you could do that anywhere; numbers may carry 
magic, as you begin to see, and transcend arithmetic ; not 
grammar, only, but the grammar, the correct ordering of 
human life ; you came for personal culture, for inspiration, for 
intellectual direction, for spiritual power, for a new vision of 
this world, for an attitude of mind: "Hast thou any 
philosophy in thee" teacher ? 

But not yet have I closed my briefest inventory of your 
winning, here beneath the elms, in these lovely associations; 
not yet. At least two more entries must be made to the credit 
side of your account. The first rises directly from the condition 
I have just described. It is an asset even more valuable than 
that attitude of mind which seems so all-important now. It is 
an acquisition that others, fortunately indeed, recognize better 
than we ever do ourselves ; perhaps in ourselves we know it 
never; therefore I may tell it. I mean now that wondrous 
ability which God gives a man, of becoming better than he 
knows! The ability to serve his fellow-men unconsciously, 
and therefore more potently and more beautifully than ever 
will be told. These teachers of yours have that gift. You 
know it; they do not. You have felt it many a time and so 
share it ; you shall feel it yet again. You may not describe it ; 
you may not seek it ; it is yours ; it is the bloom of the fruit ; 
it is the iridescence of the plume ; it is the luminous brilliance 
of the wave ; it is the blaze of the opal ; the silent, unspoken, 
all-potent influence of each noble human soul! 

It is said that Robert Moffatt, the pioneer Scotch teacher 
in South Africa, was impressed in early manhood with the idea 
that, could he only tell his story, all Africa would heed. In 
his old age, it is said that he thought of his life as a failure. 
But in both cases he was much mistaken. It is true that Africa 
did not wholly listen; but, on the other hand, it is also true 
that South Africa to-day is English, and in the line of all 
future social progress. 

' ' In the glory of youth the young man sped 

Forth from his father's door; 
'They will heed,' he cried, 'to the spoken word 

For the great world rolls before.' 

"In the weakness of age an old man crept 

Back to his father's door; 
' I have uttered my word and none has heard, 

And the great world rolls as before.' " 

No : don 't believe it 1 Life is forever more than a spoken 



word ! Moffatt lives, and his work abides, though he realized 
never, as he thought, the expectation of his plans. Moffatt 's 
son-in-law was David Livingston! and David Livingston was 
follov/ed by Cecil Rhodes ! 

There is still one other asset which is yours this morning, 
and must never be overlooked nor forgotten in any such review 
as that we are making here and now. This last acquisition I 
here mention is the wonderful circle of friendship into which 
you have been privileged to come, and in which hereafter you 
shall have abiding place. The united faculty and alumni of this 
college constitute a fraternity, a sodality, whose warmth and 
loyalty are of never-to-be-estimated importance and value to 
every man and to every woman privileged to enter the charmed 
circle. Here is no bond of wealth, of caste, of privilege, of 
religion, even; but nevertheless an allegiance that shall 
dominate all future years. You young people, on this fair 
June morning, have no slightest idea how strong are the bonds 
of such affection ; and how hereafter with increasing years, in 
spite of yourselves, in spite of opposition, in spite of mishap, 
discouragement, and apparent failure even, the spirit and in- 
spiration, the united courage of these associations, will work 
miracles and carry you out and forward to a life of rich 
accomplishment, of valiant service in this world. 

Let us sum it all up : Scholarship, knowledge, learning — 
these you have in part ; mental attitude, disposition, philosophy 
of the world, views of duty, character in short, felt but not 
seen of men — these you have in full ; and then, behind all these, 
the organization and sympathy and mutual allegiance, the bond 
of common affection and purpose of this great college; such 
make for you this morning memorable forever, the Commence- 
ment, the beginning of life beautiful forevermore. 

But now, having thus sketched the outcome of past ex- 
perience, let us turn for a little in the other direction, and see 
how we can use the gifts we have thus acquired. 

This, at first blush, looks easy: we are teachers; all we 
have to do is to teach ; and what is more, if we teach in public 
schools, as most of us expect to do, custom has prescribed what 
we shall teach: reading, arithmetic, grammar, history, 
geography, and such things. To this the Iowa statutes have 
sagely added physiology and music; and after 1915, agricul- 
ture, manual training, and domestic science seem to be "indi- 
cated," as the homeopathist might say. 



This all looks simple enough; but if the argument just 
concluded has significance at all, it is plain that the province 
of a teacher in our public schools is just as much wider than 
any mere list of subjects, as his training here has transcended 
the mere exercises of the class room. I may not attempt to 
discuss all that the situation thus suggests. Three points only 
would I set in order, as this morning we look out on the open 
fields of a teacher's opportunity — first, his work in the school 
room; second, his work for people outside the school room; 
and third, his work for himself. 

In the first place, then, no service in the school room can 
be considered adequate which has not constant respect to the 
purpose which the commonwealth has in view in paying for 
the service rendered. The Republic looks out over the un- 
bridled hosts of the democracy, millions of men swept by all 
the strenuous fierceness of human greed, human ambition, 
human passions ; she reads the fate of the republics of the past, 
and in justifiable alarm she summons her wise men; what 
shall I do? How shall I control a multitude so diverse, so 
fierce, so heedless, that I miay live and not die? And the wise 
men give answer, "Teach the children; make men intelligent 
and righteous, and you shall live and not die." And the 
great Republic and each commonwealth answers, — "Lo, here 
are my treasures; spend and spare not; do your utmost that 
my citizens may be intelligent and wise, and I shall never 
reckon the cost, that the Republic may live and not die." 
And the wise men go forth, and the school houses rise on every 
hill-top, and in every valley, on every plain, in every wood, 
from ocean to ocean; and the teachers enter in! "Was there 
ever such a spectacle in the history of this world recorded in 
the book of time ; a great people rising to educate themselves ! 
Nobody counts the money, nobody mentions the cost; the 
laborer gives his penny, the millionaire his thousands, his 
millions; everybody votes ''aye," that the Republic, the 
commonwealth, may live and not die! The school house 
stands with open door ; the teacher enters in ! 

And now the children begin to gather: you may see them 
marching, young men and maidens, little children, the boys 
and the girls ; it is autumn ; the cool air of morning freshens 
their youthful faces, and the tinted leaves are rustling about 
their willing feet. 

The school room doors stand open wide and the hosts of 



the republic enter in! The doors are shut, and the teacher 
stands in presence of her duty. She is set to teaching reading 
and writing and arithmetic. Yes, yes! And then she begins 
to read, "that government of the people, by the people, for 
the people shall not perish from the earth!" Who wrote that? 
Was he rich? Did he have money and stocks and houses and 
farms? Did he have castles in Europe and dwellings in 
California? Oh, no; he was poor; so poor that when a boy he 
could not go to school, but lay on the floor in the light of a 
fire-place in a prairie cabin, and wrought out his arithmetic on 
the smooth surface of a wooden shovel, polished in the 
winnowed grain at the threshing floor where by day he toiled. 
The children learn his name. They read the story of fifty 
years ago. They see old men moving about the streets, a 
copper badge their only decoration. Can they believe it that 
these were young once, as are they; that boys heard the voice 
of Abraham Lincoln; that thousands rose to his summons, 
heard no call to wealth; heard but the voice of duty; dis- 
appeared in Southern forests and along the swampy, sedgy 
rivers, and came back no more ? These remain forever young, 
and the teacher reads again : 

"Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow! 

For never shall their aureoled presence lack: 

I see them muster in a gleaming row 

"With ever-youthful brows that nobler show; 

We find in our dull road their shining track. ' ' 

Who wrote that? Was he rich? Was he great? Did he 
have castles in Europe and palaces in New York? Ah, no, he 
was poor; poor as men count wealth today, but rich, rich, as 
you see, in all nobler thoughts and ways. 

Even so the republic shall be safe. That teacher is teaching 
reading; she is teaching literature. She has set up a new 
standard; and presently upon the minds of the young people 
there begins to dawn a sense of values that are real, that 
shine and ring through the years, and that can not be measured 
by all the silver coin of the realm, though silver were free as 
ever benevolent Mr. Bryan could wish it, and came in showers 
upon the pavement. 

Such visions of value may iiot come in a day, though 
sometimes they do; sometimes the lesson of a day lasts for 
fifty years. 

But if not in a day, yet during the years through which 
American children are moving forward to young manhood and 



womanhood, through the fair fields of our sweet, pure litera- 
ture, through our more than romantic, heroic, and generally 
noble history, through the fascinations of physical science, you 
may lead them to such an estimate of things really abiding, 
and satisfying, and worth while in this world, that by and by 
you have a whole community around you devoted to ideals the 
best that men know ; by and by you have a generation of men 
loving cleanness and simplicity and beauty; wisdom will be 
justified of her children, and the commonwealth shall live and 
not die! 

On and after January 1, 1915, every one who teaches in 
our Iowa public schools must pass an examination in agricul- 
ture, manual training and domestic science. But let us not err. 
Even here we seek not to develop intelligence in the ordinary 
conduct of our familiar agricultural operations alone ; it is not 
only desired that a teacher be able to know a ''hawk from a 
handsaw," a cart from a plow, a grain of barley from a grain 
of wheat, a cow from a cabbage; but we seek in fact some- 
thing far different from this, "We would develop in the minds 
of young people a love for rural scenes and things, gladness 
in the health and beauty of country life, the nobility and 
independence of its industries, contentment and joy in the 
most necessary, most ancient, and universal employments of 
the race. In other words, we seek again a philosophy, an 
attitude of mind for all our people, at once patriotic, satisfying, 
and sane in every way. 

Such studies, therefore, shall not interfere with the 
ordinary cultural studies of our schools. I think I could show 
an intelligent boy in a few hours how to meet all the needs of 
a Jersey cow — and she is as finicky as the Duchess of Daisy- 
down — but, all that the schools can teach, and all that the 
government can do, and all that life may bring forth, may one 
day still be inadequate, insufficient wholly, to meet the crying 
loneliness of that same boy's throbbing, longing heart! 

Most of the educational criticism of to-day is the most 
superficial sort of pedantry. We are told that we must fit boys 
and girls for practical work, that the knowledge of to-day 
is worth all the lore of the past. In California, two years since, 
one of these fine critics demonstrated that high school students 
knew more of Roman history than of happenings reported in 
the journals of San Francisco, and immediately rushed out 



with the appeal, "Are our American schools set to make Roman 
citizens?" Had he turned his investigation the other way 
around, he had no doubt discovered that the loafers and 
worthless idlers of California cities know more of the prize- 
fights, police courts, and Barbary coasts of San Francisco — 
the contents of San Francisco newspapers — than do the boys 
and girls of the high school, whose reading has been otherwise 
directed and to whom we are committing year by year the 
destinies of the republic. 

All such criticism is based upon an extremely narrow 
view of what is practical. If that only is practical which makes 
for toil and for the necessities of daily living, if the needs of 
the boy and of the Jersey cow lie thus in the same direction; 
then our problems of education become simplified indeed. Men 
were once reckoned and called cattle ; but it did not work. The 
French Revolution disposed forever of that idea. But any 
educational theory which fails to take account of humanity 
in man, which fails to reach human love and hope and aspira- 
tion, which fails to make dominant the best that mankind has 
thought and wrought, which fails to recognize the light that is 
brighter than the arc, the light that lit that useful flame, but 
shall burn long after every carbon point shall blacken in the 
glow of day — any criticism of any less scope than this is futile, 
worthless, meriting consideration only as benevolence might 
seek to save the critic himself. "I saw an angel standing in 
the sun!" says the man of the Revelations. The old Scotch 
preacher read it and exclaimed, "Ye can do little wi' that 
man who has seen an angel standing in the sun," and he knew 
whereof he spoke. The light of intelligence is brighter than 
the sun. We know all about that luminous sphere; and even 
discount his radiance, as compared with that of other stars, 
and boldly say at last that "one star differeth from another 
star in glory." 

And yet men say that only that education is practical 
which teaches a boy to compute interest, to manage a steam- 
engine or a linotype machine, to build a bam for the Jersey 
cow, or a palace for her owner. 

The story is told of a young man and his wife, who stood 
on a tower in Florence. They looked on the valley of the Amo. 
They were Americans; possibly from Iowa. They saw never 



such a view: mountain and plain and river, and fertile field, 

garden and orchard, forest and city and palace : — 

"Here, snatching up a bit of coal, 
A young creator flung a soul 
Into a sketch upon the wall 
Where still you see the vital scrawl: 
It was four centuries ago, — 
The boy's name, Michel Angelo. 

* * » 
Caiano, where for solace went 
Lorenzo, the Magnificent; 
Careggi, where he turned aside 
From the Dominican,, and died; 
Arcetri, whence the unblinded eyes 
Of Galileo swept the skies. 

« * * 

Of Vallombrosa, 'Etrurian shades 
High over-arched,' whence Milton took 
That image of the leaf-strown brook ' ' — 

they even caught a glimpse. They saw all this. They had all 
that wealth could furnish; but they looked into each other's 
eyes and said, "How fine it would all be if we only knew any- 
thing!" They knew many things, but they lacked that par- 
ticular knowledge our California critic would despise; they 
lacked intelligence. It was not that they knew no Italian or 
Latin, or anything abstruse ; but simply that they did not know 
the meaning of Florence ; not even where to find the needed in- 
formation ; they did not know the meaning of their time, the 
history of the world. They had missed entirely intellectual 
satisfaction, intellectual joy. The only pleasure that wealth 
can not buy ; only the teacher can bring us in sight of illumin- 
ation such as this. 

But in the second place your opportunity lies also outside 
the schoolroom. 

A former president of the University of Illinois, not long 
ago, gave to a graduating class this advice: "Keep step with 
the procession. It is a pretty good crowd, and it is generally 
moving in the right direction. Act with the party ; yell for the 
ticket ; and whoop it up for the flag ! ' ' 

Dr. Draper was a very eminent man, commissioner of 
education for the state of New York. He no doubt was a 
thoroughly patriotic and useful man; but in this speech we 
can not agree with him at all. To take such an attitude is 
virtually to throw to the winds on the streets every ideal we 
set up in the school. Dr. Draper's intention is good. He 
meant that we should be in sympathy with the enthusiasm of 




our fellow-men, that we should be loyal to our own institutions 
as we find them, no doubt; and yet not for a moment can we 
agree with Dr. Draper's careless statement. He has the whole 
case turned wrong end to. 

The business of the teacher is to be informed and to set 
the step for the crowd, and guide the direction of its movement. 
Even the flag may be carried in wrong directions. And as for 
the party, the safety of the constitution lies in the very fact 
that men are intelligent enough all the time not to act with 
party when the party goes plainly wrong. Mr. Bryan found 
that out, and so did Mr. Taft, and even our most illustrious 
leader of reform finds in Amazon forests betimes space for 
reflection. To the phrase, "Whoop it up," the distinguished 
body of purists now before me would doubtless immediately 
give answer, "Cut it out!" 

But there are a thousand ways in which a teacher may 
serve his or her community and not enter the political field 
at all. We may even leave politics largely to men, as is still 
for a season the fashion, I believe, in benighted Iowa, and yet 
in social and economic ways find opportunity to serve the 
commonwealth to most noble purpose. Women avail to bring 
to a community the spirit of sanity, of cleanness, of beauty that 
touches every home, even the humblest, every avenue and 
street, even the widest and finest. Here is the especial field 
of the woman who is called to teach. She has the ideas and 
the inspiration; others will furnish the money, — for reason. 
Every civic problem, every effort for the welfare of children, 
as well as for the safety of their mothers, is field-work for the 
trained and gifted teacher, and makes everywhere for the 
conservation of our free institutions. 

The difference between teachers is not so much in what 
they teach as in themselves, in their appreciation of what they 
attempt, their grasp of duty, their ability to serve. 

But, lastly, no man, as it seems to me, is sufficient for all 
these things, who does not somehow find perpetual recreation in 
some form of self-culture; and so in the third place I have 
ventured to suggest the teacher's duty to himself — the duty of 
continued intellectual effort in some field of intellectual 
delight. 

Let us speak not now of organized graduate study; what 
I urge is broader than that, and will apply after all formal 
graduate work has been completed. I refer to the student's 



own care of his own intellectual life. No student passes 
through an institution such as this without finding somewhere 
his interest quickened, his taste aroused, so that he realizes 
his preference for some one definite thing — for language, 
science, mathematics, literature. Let him follow his preference. 
Let him by private study become the best arithmetician, the 
best astronomer, the best physicist in Iowa; let him pursue to 
the last detail the science of field and river, as everywhere such 
is now accessible; let him study his favorite language, his 
favorite page of history. In all these things, rather in some 
one of them, he shall find the pathway of life. Perhaps litera- 
ture he affects. How fair the field! How great the oppor- 
tunity! How needed in Iowa the art! Study literature, read 
it, create it. On these rich fields its coming is delayed. But 
it yet shall rise from the spirit-peopled mists where our prairie 
rivers wind, from the golden shadows that move across our 
corn-embroidered fields, from the haunting memory of red man 
and pioneer, as these move dimly by forest, grove, and spring. 

These are some of the things that shall save the teacher, 
and so make him mighty to save the community, the common- 
wealth. 

In real physical things we are rich enough today. We 
have exploited the accumulated wealth of millenia and are 
surfeited. What we need is wisdom to use our inheritance. 
This we must have if we are not to sink in the mire of com- 
mercialism and see all high vision, all pure appreciation, 
blotted out for us and for our children. To avert such 
catastrophe, you men and women are this day set apart; to 
forfend it by your own loyal enthusiasm; by the ideals you 
set up to anticipate the swiftness of its coming, that the 
Republic may live and not die ! 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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